Papajohns.com Bowl: Schools can win, lose big in bowl business

As of Tuesday, Connecticut had reported selling or distrib­uting only about 4,000 of its 10,000 tickets for the Papa­johns. com Bowl. How the Huskies manage their ex­penses this week in Birming­ham will determine if they leave as financial winners.

In the bowl business, ticket guarantees help the system thrive but often at the expense of the participating schools. Many times, schools leave with financial deficits from playing in a bowl.

Allocated bowl tickets that schools can't sell cost schools and their conferences $15.53 million last season to play in the combined 34 bowl games, according to a recent analysis by The San Diego Union-Tri­bune. That's an all-time high, up from $14.9 million in 2007-08 and $9.3 million for 2006-07.

The Union-Tribune found that bowl teams, on average, exceeded their conference ex­pense allowances by at least $120,000 per team last year. Unsold tickets are the third­largest expense item for teams and conferences, behind only transportation and meals/ lodging.

Bowl game payouts to con­ferences, when factoring in the revenue sharing, usually produce a profit for teams. Conferences combine the pay­outs from bowls into a pool, with most of the money com­ing from the five Bowl Cham­pionship Series games.

That means the 29 non-BCS games are often a break-even venture at best for the schools and conferences. Ticket sales and controlling expenses play a crucial role in determining how schools do financially.

Bowl payouts come with the important caveat of ticket guarantees that schools must buy. Without the ticket guar­antees, bowls would be uncer­tain of their revenue.

Minimum ticket guar­antees are negotiated be­tween conferences and bowls. Sometimes schools compete against each other by saying they can take more tickets.

The Papajohns.com Bowl, once one of the lowest-pay­ing games in the country, increased its payouts upon becoming affiliated with the SEC last year. This season, the SEC's No. 10 team re­ceives a $900,000 payout, and the Big East No. 4 gets $600,000.

The difference shows the value placed on having an SEC team in Birmingham. This will be the first year the SEC plays in the Papajohn­s. com Bowl. The Big East has played in the game all four years.

The combined $1.5 mil­lion payout for the Papa­johns. com Bowl is the sec­ond- highest among the six bowls owned by ESPN, ac­c o r d i n g t o an ESPN spokeswoman. The highest is the Las Vegas Bowl, which pays $1 million to the Mountain West and $950,000 to the Pac-10.

In other ESPN-owned bowls, the Armed Forces Bowl pays $600,000 each to the Mountain West and Conference USA; the Hawaii Bowl pays $600,000 to C­USA and $425,000 to the WAC; the St. Petersburg Bowl pays $400,000 to the Big East and $350,000 to C­USA; and the New Mexico Bowl pays $180,000 each to the WAC and Mountain West.

Bowl cost Rutgers

The Big East, which is 3-0 in the Papajohns.com Bowl, has experienced a mixed bag financially in Birming­ham. Bowl expense docu­ments from the schools and published reports show two made a profit in Birming­ham and one ended with a deficit.

Rutgers lost more than $184,000 last year, despite collecting $1.18 million from the Big East for its ex­pense allowance. School of­ficials had thought they would break even, but coaches' bonuses, sluggish ticket sales, and a large trav­eling squad contributed to losing money.

Rutgers sold less than half of its 10,000 tickets, absorb­ing a cost of $214,000. Other costs included $282,610 to send 205 members of the football team and staff to Birmingham for six days; $165,799 for 187 members of the band and cheerlead­ing squad, who went for three days; and $28,950 for 21 members of the faculty, administration and athletics department.

Two years earlier, South Florida absorbed a loss of $201,810 in unsold tickets after selling 3,273 from its allotment of 10,000 to the inaugural Papajohns.com Bowl. South Florida finished with $228,795 in net pro­ceeds out of the Big East's expense allowance of $1.1 million.

In 2007, Cincinnati ab­sorbed $20,850 from Papa­johns. com Bowl tickets. The Bearcats had $440,814 in net proceeds from the Big East's expense allowance of $1.07 million.

The Bearcats came out ahead by not eating many tickets and by watching their costs. It didn't hurt that Cincinnati is geograph­ically the closest Big East team to have played in the Papajohns.com Bowl.

Cincinnati spent only $313,693 on travel, meal and lodging costs for the team, coaching staff, band, cheerleaders and official traveling party. By contrast, that number was $392,478 for South Florida and $477,359 for Rutgers.

South Carolina has sold out its ticket allotment for this week's game. Connecti­cut, meanwhile, could be eating about a quarter of a million dollars in unsold tickets.

A year ago, the Huskies reported a profit of $18,484 for a trip to the Interna­tional Bowl in Toronto. That came after buying $376,760 worth of tickets, compared to approximately $450,000 in ticket purchases for the Papajohns.com Bowl.

This month, Connecticut urged fans to buy a $45 ticket to the Papajohns.com Bowl and donate it to mili­tary personnel or disadvan­taged children in Birming­ham. Every fan who donated a ticket will receive a pair of tickets to a Con­necticut home game in 2010, as selected by the ath­letics department.

Because in the bowl busi­ness, winning the game doesn't ensure winning the profit margin, too.